Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI • Hacker News Board

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#591

Post by clauderoux » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 3:19 PM UTC

calf wrote: post #490

clauderoux wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently I had to share a documentation written in Word, which I had to format in Markdown to put it on Github. I transformed my document into a text file for each chapter and then I asked chatGPT to transform each of these files into a Markdown page. And I also asked it to improve the English. Then I asked chatGPT to translate each of these files into different languages. The result is here: https://github.com/naver…

OK then that's tedious work, not complex work. I know that lots of people have personal stories of using ChatGPT but I was hoping something publicly reported on or like a showcase of truly impressive usages somewhere.

You are kidding right. Taking a raw text file and detecting every single header, sub-headers, keywords and pieces of code to add the right markdown tags is a simple task to you?

Have you ever tried to make a Python program to do exactly that?

I only used couple of sentences to build my prompt...

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#592

Post by mcpackieh » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 3:22 PM UTC

hhsectech wrote: post #556

mcpackieh wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness has no technical meaning. Even for other humans, it is a (good and morally justified) leap of faith to assume that other humans have thought processes that roughly resemble your own. It's a matter philosophers debate and science cannot address. Science cannot disprove the p-zombie hypothesis because nobody can devise an empirical test for consciousness.

I dont understand why something has to be conscious to be intelligent. If they were the same thing we wouldn't have two separate words. I suspect AGI is quite possible, it just won't be what everyone thinks it will be.

I think I basically agree. Unless somebody can come up with an empirical test for consciousness, I think consciousness is irrelevant. What matters are the technical capabilities of the system. What tasks is it able to perform? AGI will be able to generally perform any reasonable task you throw at it. If it's a p-zombie or not won't matter to engineers, only philosophers and theologians (or engineers moonlighting as those.)

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#593

Post by Xenoamorphous » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

infecto wrote: post #506

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do those people want the compensation for? To sleep on a mansion and back to work? Assuming they leave the office. What I’m trying to say is that it is an addiction like any other and should be treated as such, not glorified.

Yes we understood your idea the first time around. And you still miss the point. It might not be for you but many individuals genuinely love their work. Either because they founded it, like the area of work, the people, or some combination. It’s ok to not enjoy it yourself. Different strokes for different folks. I don’t think it should be culturally championed but I don’t see it as an immediate red flag especially in…

And I think you might be the one missing the point, because you keep saying it’s ok for them because they love it.

Surely all addicts love the thing they’re addicted to, but that doesn’t make it ok, even in the case where their addiction doesn’t ruin their lives short or mid term.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#594

Post by macintux » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 3:39 PM UTC

Kye wrote: post #583

angoragoats wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems less of a lift I’ve seen this expression a lot recently and it baffles me. The word you are looking for is “effort,” or if you prefer adjectives, maybe something like “difficult.”

This will blow your mind but English has endless dialects and minor variations. This is like complaining that someone calls soda pop or says y'all.

Englisc must ðêos hwierfan

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#595

Post by cthalupa » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 3:40 PM UTC

LightMachine wrote: post #526

mirzap wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could be witnessing another Apple-Jobs moment. He could go and pursue other interests, but I have a feeling that he deeply cares about OpenAI. If that's the case, he will be back eventually, just as Jobs returned to Apple repeatedly.

Completely different situation. Jobs couldn't just fundraise for his new Oranges company, lure all the talent out of Apple and outcompete it at that point. Sam can do that to OpenAI in a blink if that's his plans.

I'm kind of confused where the confidence comes from that Sam could somehow lure all of the talent out of OpenAI. One of the most important technical talents was apparently the key player in Sam's ouster to begin with, and we have no idea if these three people are leaving because they want to follow Sam or because they want to avoid the drama that is sure to follow, or how much of the rest of the talent feels even remotely like they do.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#596

Post by Jensson » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 3:40 PM UTC

i8comments wrote: post #578

Jensson wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the legal and financials parts of ChatGPT are very questionable. I don't think Google would launch a service that would open them up to so many lawsuits unless it was very profitable, and I doubt ChatGPT is very profitable currently. Bard was likely not trained on copyrightable data, that makes it safe from lawsuits but also removes most of the usecases people want ChatGPT for. And it isn't just about lawsuits,…

Why is it legally questionable?

If it wasn't there wouldn't be lots of lawsuits being filed about it.

https://innovationorigins.com/en/openai-and-googles-bard-acc...

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#597

Post by ianbicking » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 3:43 PM UTC

thr8976 wrote: post #4

Aleksander in particular is deeply invested in AI safety as a mission. It's a very confusing departure, since most of the reporting so far indicates that Ilya and the board fired Sam to prioritize safety and non-profit objectives. A huge loss for OpenAI nonetheless.

A rudder only works as long as you are moving faster than the current. I can imagine (some) people concerned with safety also feeling a sense of urgency, because their ability to steer the AI toward the good is limited by their organization's engine of progress.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#598

Post by INGSOCIALITE » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 3:47 PM UTC

fennecbutt wrote: post #415

Shank wrote: post #192

It seems like firing Sam and causing this massive brain drain might be antithetical to the whole AGI mission of the original non-profit. If OpenAI loses everyone to Sam and he starts some new AI company, it probably won't be capped-profit and just be a normal company. All of the organizational safeguards OpenAI had inked with Microsoft and protection against "selling AGI" once-developed are out-the-window if he just…

Microsoft will partner with them if they start a new company I reckon, 100%. And Microsoft are risk adverse enough that I think they do care about AI safety, even if only from a "what's best for the business" standpoint. Tbh idc if we get AGI. There'll be a point in the future where we have AGI and the technology is accessible enough that anybody can create one. We need to stop this pointless bickering over this sort…

Not if the tool is so neutered and politicized that it can ONLY be used one certain way, which is how things are pointing. Call me a Luddite if you will, but unless AI / AGI is uncensored and uninhibited in its use and function, it’s just the quickest path to an Orwellian future.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#599

Post by s1artibartfast » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 3:50 PM UTC

thinkingemote wrote: post #195

antman wrote: post #163

So what was he lying about that got the board so pissed? A story that fits is that they assumed/knew that he had different goals and/or was going to create a spinoff. If they waited for the GPT5 pretraining to finish and then they minimized the cost of the loss of Altman and the engineers. The whole secrecy, compartmentalization and urgency of their actions could only be explained by being against a wall. Otherwise i…

current popular theory is that those fired/left were taking OpenAI for profit, and the board stuck with their original goal of non profit.

Nobody was "taking" anything for profit. That ship had sailed.

The OpenAI 501(c)3 already spun up a for-profit company in 2019 to do all the commercial work and take VC money.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#600

Post by Jayakumark » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 3:53 PM UTC

OpenAI was started as non profit and it went the profit route with capping.

For profit will always win non-profit because It’s run by people - once they see money , they want more not less.

This was meant to happen when it changed its structure to cap profits at 100x . If Microsoft invests $10 billion openAI Can make $1 trillion in profits before giving a dime to its non profit. If it makes $1 trillion it can just ask someone to invest $1 billion and wait until it makes another $100 billion .

Sam, Brockman and others who resigned will start a new for-profit company. Sam will use his influence to get funding and contracts. They know the tech and with know how of everything, build better model. And OpenAI will be forced to give up and work with them as it’s part of their founding policy.